Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Wick Allison, Editor-in-Chief of our very own D Magazine, explains why he ardent conservatism leads him to endorse Barack Obama for President. I shouldn't say Allison defected, so much as he appears to have realized that his party defected from him:

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

I may not agree with the man's principles, but his willingness to adhere to them is a mark of integrity. To be fair, many conservatives who are alarmed at the path George W. Bush and his version of the GOP have trod nonetheless can't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. Their unwillingness doesn't make them less principled, but it does indicate that they perhaps misjudge the danger posed to our nation by their runaway party. Clearly, Allison does not.